Human Resources committee  Sure. Thanks for all that background. I think there's no social justification for providing tax breaks to real estate investment trusts in housing. These firms are making their money by making housing less affordable and affecting security of tenure, things that are running counter to the right to adequate housing.

Human Resources committee  Yes, I would support that. Unless financialized landlords can indicate that they plan to pursue affordable housing, to not raise rents, to not pursue evictions at higher rates than other types of landlords, to ensure security of tenure for people and to basically not work toward a violation of the right to adequate housing, there shouldn't be support for these firms to acquire and to consolidate ownership of our very important rental housing stock in Canada.

Human Resources committee  That's actually a very difficult question to answer. We've tried to look into it just a little bit in the report. We've seen that early indication of some institutional firms that are investing in single-family rentals. For example, Core Development Group is a real estate investment trust, or REIT, that was launched in order to acquire single-family homes in Canada.

Human Resources committee  Thank you for the question. The rental construction financing initiative, RCFI, is one of the programs where there has been support given to financial firms, so there's an example there. In terms of what the federal government could do to better prevent this, I think that the National Housing Strategy Act programs could better support the construction of non-market housing, as the advocate mentioned, such as subsidized housing, including co-ops, non-profits and social housing.

Human Resources committee  I don't have the figure itself in front of me. However, it is the case that researchers Steve Pomeroy and Duncan Maclennan have done research looking into the loss of affordable units. They associate this with financialization of housing. What we're seeing is that financial firms are buying existing multi-family housing and driving up the prices of that housing in the way that I and the other panellists have discussed.

Human Resources committee  Absolutely. I think that's a crucial tool. We have such an important, valuable stock of social housing, albeit a small proportion of Canada's housing stock, that is underfunded and been under-maintained ever since the federal government withdrew support for social housing in this country.

Human Resources committee  Thank you. That's a great question. I think it's important to remember that the federal government has an obligation to uphold the right to housing. These firms are violating that right to housing. I think the government should decide to no longer use national housing strategy funds to support firms that are violating the right to adequate housing.

Human Resources committee  Just to answer your question, we have increasing investor-based ownership—

Human Resources committee  I calculated the number of units owned by real estate investment trusts per province and then compared that to the national share of apartment units in that province to see if they owned more than what you would expect, given the share of apartments in that province. I found that provinces that had stronger rent control had lower proportion of REIT ownership compared to what you would expect, and provinces with weaker rent control were the opposite.

Human Resources committee  Yes, it's purpose-built rental housing. I was looking at rental housing over six units, larger rental housing construction, not secondary units.

Human Resources committee  No, I wouldn't agree with that. I would say that this is a common strategy to try to downplay the concentration of ownership by financial firms. If we're looking at purpose-built rentals, they have acquired an enormous number. We don't even know the full extent, because it's very difficult to get the full details.

Human Resources committee  I was just going to finish answering your question. We do have increasing investor ownership of single-family rental housing as well, so that would be.... There's core development REIT, for example, real estate investment trust of single family homes—

Human Resources committee  Hi. Thanks to the committee for inviting me here today. My name is Martine August, and I'm an associate professor at the University of Waterloo. I'm also the lead for a series of reports commissioned by the advocate on the financialization of housing. I'm here today with the authors of these reports.